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Sunday, 26 August 2012

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure HD Lacks Frills, But Has Heart

In other fighting game playtests, I’ve talked about the ways in which
modern fighting games (or rereleases) have all sorts of modes to bring
you up to speed with how the game is working mechanically. In JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure HD,
there is none of that. No tutorial mode to walk you through how to
properly evade or use advancing guards, no “getting to know your stand”
feature, and no individual character challenges to teach you combos.

You
do get a tutorial in the form of a digital manual of sorts, and the
game mercifully provides in-game command lists for every character, but
outside of that, the learning experience is all on the player. This port
feels like it came right out of the Dreamcast era, with only a few
concessions to modernity.

So, what are those concessions?
Well, you get an “HD” mode, which is primarily a single sprite filter
(which actually looks quite nice in comparison to other, similar
filters), the option to turn blood from the US version’s white to the
Japanese version’s red, and the requisite online play. That’s about it.

While
the port is sparse to say the least, the game itself is a blast. Each
character has a “Stand,” (think a ghostly familiar of sorts) which they
can activate with a press of the Stand button. While the Stand might
make an appearance in a character’s normal or special attacks, a stand
changes the way they play completely. Leading man Jotaro Kujo, for
instance, has his Light, Medium, and Heavy normals combo into each other
more easily when his Stand is active, and he will accompany his Stand
as it moves forward with a flurry of punches. When his Stand is not
active, he can effectively attack his enemies from both sides by sending
his Stand forward with an attack before dodging behind an opponent with
L+M+H simultaneously.

On
top of the Stand system, JoJo is fast. You’re constantly dodging,
dashing, and hopping to put pressure on your opponents. It’s really fun
to keep pressure on your opponents and rush them down, at least for me.
While my beginner’s ineptitude often got me into trouble, I found that
keeping pressure on opponents led to the most exciting fights. When both
players are hopping all over the place with their stands charging at
each other, JoJo becomes a sight to behold.

Because of the
lack of tutorials and the like, I found that the best way to get a hang
of a character was a trial by fire. I’d hop into training mode and give
a character’s movelist a once-over before going online. Despite my Super Street Fighter IV-born
fears of Capcom’s netcode while playing against people from other
countries, to a beginner like me, my matches against Japanese players
(who seem to make up the majority of the online audience, at the moment)
all felt very smooth and responsive. Even considering my generally weak
internet, I’ve had absolutely no trouble playing with anyone in Japan
or the US.

As this is my first excursion into the JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure universe, I found myself intrigued by everything from the character designs (all the manliness of Fist of the North Star
combined with the fabulousness of a glam rock concert), the
musically-inspired character names, and the absolutely insane story
mode. You see, in JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, in the place of
“arcade mode” in practically every other fighter is “story mode,” which
pits you against an assortment of enemies, but gives you little bits of
story with some minimally-animated sprites between each battle.

While
this doesn’t sound like a big deal, I was impressed by how much Capcom
played with the format. While the fights were generally two rounds per
opponent, not every fight played out the same. For instance, while I was
playing as Jotaro, I had a one-round fight against what appeared to be
the grim reaper, and another round that was a mini-game in which I had
to destroy or avoid obstacles to run towards a one-hit enemy before time
(or my health) ran out. When playing through as the main antagonist,
Dio Brando, I had a much shorter story to play through that started from
the end of Jotaro’s story and one of the matches I fought switched
opponents between rounds.

I can’t honestly say I
completely understood the game’s story, but I certainly enjoyed the
dramatic weight it gave to French bulldogs fighting alongside a Sean
Connery lookalike and the world’s most muscular high-school student
against vampires.

While JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure HD
doesn’t really add a whole lot of the modern conveniences and little
bonuses I’ve come to expect from a fighting game, I can’t help but love
it. It’s absolutely ludicrous, beautiful, and a lot of fun.

Food for Thought:
1.
The command list is displayed in a really weird way. For instance, if
you have to press forward, heavy attack, medium attack, light attack,
forward to do an attack, the command list will look something like this:
->+H+M+L+->. While you get used to this after a second glance,
it’s a bit jarring at first, since it can look like you’re supposed to
input everything simultaneously.

2. Online replays allow
you to display both players’ inputs and hitboxes. While I would have
loved an option to turn on hitboxes in training mode, it’s kind of nice
to see how exactly your opponent hit you.

3. I love the
game’s animation and attention to detail. I’m particularly fond of the
way that a cut-in of your opponent’s injured face appears onscreen if
you defeat them with a super (and will be cut in half if you finish them
with a blade-wielding character’s screen-dividing super).